The present invention relates to a motor vehicle front body panel.
A motor vehicle front body panel is a component which is designed to be installed at the front of the vehicle, generally directly on its chassis, in order simultaneously to support the headlamp units, the hood safety fastening system, possibly the radiator grill, as well as other parts of the vehicle such as a radiator or a fan.
These functions require the front body panel to have good overall rigidity, and to be particularly strong in its region connecting the point for fastening the hood to the chassis of the vehicle.
In fact, since the function of fastening the hood constitutes an important element in the safety of the vehicle, it is of prime importance that the front body panel should exhibit optimum resistance to any force tending to lift the hood.
Now, owing to the presence of the radiator at the front of the engine of most motor vehicles, any front body panel must leave a free central passage corresponding to the dimensions of the radiator, so that the hood fastening point which is also in the central zone is situated above the opening in the front body panel.
As a result of this, the region of the front body panel connecting the point for fastening the hood to the chassis of the vehicle is not straight but follows the contour of the central passage. As a consequence, in the event of the hood being forced up it is subjected not only to tensile forces but also to substantial bending forces.
Front body panels are already known which consist of the assembly of pieces of sheet metal riveted, screwed, or welded together.
However, these sheet metal front body panels have the drawbacks of being expensive owing in particular to the number of operations required in assembling and fixing the components together, and of having substantial weight.
In order to remedy these drawbacks, front body panels using the molding of plastic have already been proposed, this making it possible to obtain components which are considerably more lightweight than sheet metal front body panels and for these to be obtained without any assembly operation.
Nevertheless, the mechanical strength of such front body panels made of plastic may prove insufficient in the event of the hood being lifted.
Furthermore, the relatively large dimensions of the front body panels may lead to internal stresses in the molded components, which moreover have low dimensional stability owing to the significant thermal expansions of plastic.